Introduction: Low Poly Desert Scene

This is a quick tutorial on how to make a low poly desert scene! Made 100% with tinkercad!
You will need:

  • Internet
  • A tinkercad account
  • About an hour

Step 1: Making the Desert Floor

This is a simple step, which can be achieved by adding 2 cubes, and setting their colors to 2 contrasting orange colors! I recommend making them flatter before duplicating them to make an 8x8 grid!

Step 2: How to Make a Cactus

This is one of the harder steps, so better get it out the way quick! Add an octagonal prism, and expand it upwards to make the height. I recommend adding a bevel and a low-resolution sphere to the top to make it more round. To make the arms, you should use a torus, with the resolution and steps turned down to 8. Crush and shape it till you get the base of an arm, which can then have a duplicate of the body added! You can then easily duplicate and move this arm around the other side. Use dark green cones to make the spikes. Remember not to add too many, or it won't look like a cactus.

Step 3: Making a Wagon!

I recommend you experiment a bit with this one, but the main concept is to layout planks of wood flat on the ground, then add wooden walls around the base, before adding the poles and top to the wagon. now, make the wheel using a tube and poles coming out from the center! Add the front poles to the wagon before lifting it up and rotating it until the poles are on the ground. Now you should attach the wheels and group it all together!

Step 4: Rocks

The rocks are very simple! Add an iso-sphere and duplicate it about 50 times, while randomly rotating and scaling them! Place them around the back of your scene and make sure you leave space for your mine!

Step 5: Mine

For the mine, just use cylinders with added bevels to the back of the scene, and a flat cube to the entrance to make it look dark.

Step 6: Homework

Here are some fun things to add yourself:

  • Minecart and track
  • barrels and dynamite
  • Decorate inside the mine!

Step 7: Photograph Your Scene

Remember to get a good angle on your scene and photograph it! Also post a make below to show me what you made!

Step 8: Bonus: Rendering

Do you want picture-perfect images? Do you want a more final image? Tinkercad has helped me in so many ways over the past few years, I do all my modeling on it, looking at other software, it just seems impossible, due to how easy Tinkercad makes it, plus, it's fully portable! With your brand new scene, maybe you want to render it, to make it look like it has been taken from the real world, go ahead and import it to some cool, free software called blender! It's as simple as Import, render, saves!

Here are the steps:

  • Download https://www.blender.org/
  • Install
  • Make a new file
  • Goto file>Import>Obj
  • Import the obj you download from tinkercad
  • Change the engine to "Cycles" Look at this image for a guide
  • At the top, click render > render image.
  • Wait for it to render, then save! (Image >save as)

Now you have a really cool image which you can use for anything!

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